British forces have hit back at Iraqi insurgents who killed six colleagues last week, by launching an operation in which they shot dead more than 20 gunmen of Basra's rogue militias. The attack began when a battalion-size force was sent into one of the southern city's toughest terrorist strongholds, three miles from where four soldiers, including two women, were blown up in their Warrior armoured vehicle.An armoured force of 400 troops from the 2Bn The Rifles and 2Bn The Duke of Lancaster's Regiment, both of which suffered fatalities last week, entered the Shia Flats area on the western outskirts of Basra to search for hidden weapons.The district is notorious as one of the most dangerous in southern Iraq. "We wanted to make quite clear there's nowhere in Basra we cannot go," a British commander told The Daily Telegraph yesterday. "We are prepared to be there in daylight and take whatever comes our way. We are not being bombed out or intimidated."... http://www.telegraph.co.uk

The White House said Wednesday it would be "unproductive and unhelpful" for Democratic leaders of Congress to visit Iran. The criticism came a day after House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (news, bio, voting record) told reporters in San Francisco he has been trying for 10 years to obtain a visa to visit with leaders in Tehran."Speaking for myself, I'm ready to go," said Lantos, D-Calif. "And knowing the speaker, I think she might be."However, a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) said she had had no intention of going to Iran.Pelosi, standing next to Lantos at a press conference, said that while she finds Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's remarks "to be so repulsive that they're outside the circle of civilized human behavior," the willingness of Lantos — a Hungarian-born survivor of the Holocaust — to meet with Ahmadinejad "speaks volumes about the importance of dialogue."...http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070411/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_iran_2

Benedict XVI, in his first extended reflections on evolution published as pope, says that Darwin's theory cannot be finally proven and that science has unnecessarily narrowed humanity's view of creation. In a new book, "Creation and Evolution," published Wednesday in German, the pope praised progress gained by science, but cautioned that evolution raises philosophical questions science alone cannot answer. "The question is not to either make a decision for a creationism that fundamentally excludes science, or for an evolutionary theory that covers over its own gaps and does not want to see the questions that reach beyond the methodological possibilities of natural science," the pope said. He stopped short of endorsing intelligent design, but said scientific and philosophical reason must work together in a way that does not exclude faith. ...http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=3031553

The earliest life on Earth might have been just as purple as it is green today, a scientist claims. Ancient microbes might have used a molecule other than chlorophyll to harness the Sun’s rays, one that gave the organisms a violet hue. Chlorophyll, the main photosynthetic pigment of plants, absorbs mainly blue and red wavelengths from the Sun and reflects green ones, and it is this reflected light that gives plants their leafy color. This fact puzzles some biologists because the sun transmits most of its energy in the green part of the visible spectrum. “Why would chlorophyll have this dip in the area that has the most energy?” said Shil DasSarma, a microbial geneticist at the University of Maryland.After all, evolution has tweaked the human eye to be most sensitive to green light (which is why images from night-vision goggles are tinted green). So why is photosynthesis not fine-tuned the same way?...http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070410/sc_livescience/earlyearthwaspurplestudysuggests

America's largest financial firm, Citigroup, has announced plans to cut 17,000 jobs, more than half overseas. The cuts, which will reduce its 327,000-strong workforce by 5%, are part of efforts to reduce costs. Citigroup hopes to make savings of $2.1bn (£1bn) in 2007, rising to $4.6bn in 2009, in order to revive profits. On top of the job cuts, 9,500 positions will be "moved to lower-cost locations, both domestically and internationally", said chief executive Charles Prince. 'Cuts start today' The job cuts are designed to reduce Citigroup's operating costs, which soared by 15% last year to $52bn, while its annual revenues rose just 7%. Citigroup's chief operating officer, Robert Druskin, who led the three-month review into how to trim costs, said most of the job cuts would be completed by the end of this year....http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6545163.stm

The Chicago City Council on Wednesday approved a $12 million settlement that could signal the end of a nearly 40-year-long legal battle to stop political hiring at City Hall. The deal, which aldermen approved 48-0, still must get final approval from U.S. District Judge Wayne Andersen, who has asked both sides to return to court May 31. Last month, the city agreed to establish a $12 million fund to be paid out to individuals who say they have been discriminated against in the hiring process dating back to 2000. The maximum award would be $100,000. "Hopefully with this settlement we can open a new era and a new chapter in city politics and city government and truly have a professional staff that will serve the people and not political patrons," Alderman Joe Moore said. ...http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=3031446